


Summer With Another Wind

by fanfictiongreenirises



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bruce Needs a Hug, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Don't copy to another site, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Non-Linear Narrative, Spring Awakening References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28188105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictiongreenirises/pseuds/fanfictiongreenirises
Summary: "Jason sat in the passenger seat beside him, and Bruce didn’t delude himself: Jason looked distinctly uncomfortable sitting there, as though he were a hairbreadth away from yanking open the door and jumping out. His posture was textbook perfect, and his hands were still. Bruce could see his chest moving up and down in a very obvious attempt at meditation.But Bruce also knew that, three months ago, Jason wouldn’t have been caught dead in the same room as Bruce, let alone in a car with him."In which the universe likes to make Jason's life as dramatic as possible.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 14
Kudos: 129
Collections: BatFam Winter Gift Exchange 2020





	Summer With Another Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reagy_Jay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reagy_Jay/gifts).



> **Prompt** :  
> Fav character: Jason Todd, dick grayson, Bruce wayne
> 
> Three Favorite relationships: Jason and dick siblings Jason and Damian siblings. Bruce and Jason father-son
> 
> What are three things you love to see? Hurt/ comfort, angst (heavy or not) good parent Bruce
> 
> Any important nopes? Not that I can think of
> 
> ~~
> 
> For the wonderful Reggie ^~^ I hope you enjoy this!!!!! It's my first time writing a Jason centric fic and I had a really fun (and angsty) time writing it =D
> 
> Shoutout to Batbirdies for helping me with characterisation and brainstorming <3<3<3
> 
> Disclaimers: I don't own DC. Title from Those You've Known from the Spring Awakening soundtrack

This fanfiction is hosted on **Archive of Our Own** , where you can read it for **free**. If you’re reading this on a different website, it was posted there without the author’s consent.

It was storming the only way ever did in Gotham. Rain was pouring from the heavens with a single-minded intent to drown every living – and non-living – thing still out on the streets. Lightning cracked open the sky every few minutes, and the sound of thunder made Bruce flinch every time he heard it.

He wished the electricity hadn’t gone out, but this far out from the city, it was common for thunderstorms to take out power lines. It had only gotten worse since the earthquake, though WE had taken measures to try and improve the previous system.

Tim and Cass had lit up the living room with candles and were trying to attract the attention of whatever spirits were supposedly lurking around, and Bruce honestly wanted no part in that. In a building as old as Wayne Manor, and having seen as much as Bruce had, their attempt was bound to turn up something unpleasant. He was glad that Damian was visiting Dick over the weekend.

Another crack of thunder, another bolt of lightning. Bruce’s fingers had automatically clutched his phone tighter, but even he couldn’t deny that the sound had made the torchlight waver for an instant.

His bedroom was pitch black, the heavy curtains drawn over the windows preventing even the brief flashes of light from piercing the darkness in the room. Bruce shone the torch towards the chest of drawers, knowing he’d find matches in there. The walls had used to have little holders for candles, and while Bruce had made sure to keep them in the designs when the Manor had been rebuilt, they hadn’t gotten around to replacing the candles in them.

Storms like this reminded him that it was nearing the anniversary of Jason’s death. Even if Bruce hadn’t been acutely aware of the date, he would’ve known by how hard it was raining – he couldn’t remember a single year that he’d visited the cemetery and not sunk down into the earth because of all the mud.

Part of him relished in it. The earth swallowed him up the way he wanted to, bringing him as close as it could to Jason’s last remains. It _should_ be a struggle to reach his gravestone, to be muddy and dishevelled.

Bruce tried to be discreet about it now, but he would still visit Jason’s empty grave. At first – before Jason had returned – it’d been something he’d _had_ to do, something that had felt like drowning only to be revived and held underwater again and again.

He’d stood there for three Aprils, at the foot of that grave, and had left a stone each time. Flowers were a permanent fixture, of course, to keep public appearances; for the first two years, gossip magazines did a giant front-page spread on Jason’s untimely demise a week before the date.

The first anniversary after Jason’s return, Bruce thought about not visiting the grave. What would be the point, to stand before an empty cavern, and mourn the loss of someone who was alive once more? It would only serve as a reminder of how Bruce had failed in more ways than he’d even _begun_ to comprehend.

But he went anyway, because despite Jason still being alive, _someone_ had died. It felt _wrong_ , deep in his bones, to _not_ go there. He’d placed a stone just like he’d done three times previously.

And so it became habit, in a way, to keep visiting Jason’s grave every year.

Bruce placed his phone upside down, shining the light up onto the ceiling and directly into his eyes. Then he rooted around inside the top drawer, hoping Tim and Cass hadn’t looted his candle supply.

He couldn’t see anything. Bruce aimed his phone into the drawer, but there was so much junk in there – _so_ that _was where Damian’s last report card had gone_ – that he needed another hand to hold up the crap so he could look beneath it.

Bruce carefully clamped his teeth onto his phone and bowed his head much more than he needed to in order to see. The light now shone directly inside; he plunged his arms in, hoping to feel the wax bodies of even a single tea candle.

All he got were papers and the occasional hair tie. He didn’t know where the hair ties had come from, seeing how Dick hadn’t even been living here when he’d had hair long enough to need them.

There was another crack of thunder, and a number of things occurred.

Bruce involuntarily bit down harder on his phone. He could feel the screen protector crack beneath his teeth, causing him to promptly release it.

The phone fell, taking the light with it, and landed on Bruce’s foot.

Bruce let out a muffled curse and leapt backwards, tripping over the chair that had apparently been behind him.

The sound of rain got louder, and an enormous gust of wind blew through the room. Someone had opened the window.

Heavy footsteps moved closer to Bruce, but they were… uneven. It was far too coordinated for them to be drunk, but ‘terrible coordination’ was a bit of a stretch.

Bruce was now clambering all over the floor in search of his phone. He couldn’t be seen to take down whoever this intruder was, not as he was right now, with no mask of any kind to cover his face, and especially not in his own bedroom.

The intruder was speaking, but Bruce couldn’t hear them over the roaring of the rain. He knew, without a doubt, that the floor in front of the window was now completely soaked; the curtains would probably have to be specially dried. Alfred was going to have his head for this, even though it really wasn’t his fault.

One question lingered in the back of Bruce’s mind: how much of the blame rested on Tim and Cass downstairs summoning spirits?

And then there was a loud _thump_ , as though a sack of potatoes had just been thrown.

Bruce’s fingers touched upon the rubbery casing of his phone, and he grabbed it with grateful fingers, instantly shining it in the direction of the sound.

“ _Jason?”_

* * *

Had Bruce not forcibly eradicated any and all nervous ticks that he had and continuously developed, he would probably have been chewing on the inside of his mouth at this point. Or fiddling with the loose skin on the side of his fingernail. Or grinding his teeth against one another.

Or all of them simultaneously.

Jason sat in the passenger seat beside him, and Bruce didn’t delude himself: Jason looked distinctly uncomfortable sitting there, as though he were a hairbreadth away from yanking open the door and jumping out. His posture was textbook perfect, and his hands were still. Bruce could see his chest moving up and down in a very obvious attempt at meditation.

But Bruce also knew that, three months ago, Jason wouldn’t have been caught dead in the same room as Bruce, let alone in a car with him. And _especially_ not outside a strictly night-time mission.

Bruce couldn’t fuck this up. He _wouldn’t_.

But the thought of that sent panicky waves down his spine; he couldn’t think about that. Bruce cleared his throat.

“What do you think?” he asked, before he could second guess the very stupid question that had just fallen from his lips.

Jason’s rhythmic breaths fell away as he blinked. “’Bout what?” Jason asked. This answer, too, gave Bruce more hope than anything else.

“The case,” he said. Common ground was good. Talking about their latest case was _safe_. Bruce already knew what Jason thought – there were few unforeseen landmines in this line of conversation.

Jason shrugged. “You already know what I think,” he said. “It’s fucked up.”

Bruce resisted the urge to sigh. He knew what Jason meant, though. It _was_ rather fucked up, the situation that had begun in Bludhaven and then leaked into Gotham. The serial killings had, at first, appeared to be someone’s futile attempt at getting the Joker’s attention: faces were carved with a smile; ‘HA HA HA’ was carved into each victim. The cause of death was an overdose of Joker venom.

The longer it went on, the more it seemed that the killer was _angry_ , raging at the lack of attention they were receiving.

Dick had joined them once it had slipped into Gotham. Bruce hadn’t originally wanted to drag Jason into the case, but the killings had gone on for _months_. No part of Gotham was safe anymore. But over the course of countless stakeouts, the meetings in the Cave purely because it was the only place that had the _space_ they needed for their ever increasing murder board, and the missions together… Jason had slowly become integrated back into Bruce’s little family.

Bruce wanted to say that it was like Jason had never left, but that wasn’t true. That would probably never be the case. He didn’t know the face of a world where every thought of Jason wasn’t in part tinged with remembered grief and an aching sorrow for things that could’ve been.

* * *

There was an absolute ocean on the wooden floorboards surrounding Jason. He was clad in… well, Bruce couldn’t tell what he was wearing, exactly, because the darkness, combined with the sopping wetness, made it difficult to tell colours apart, but he had a hoodie on instead of his usual jacket – and _really_ , the _one_ time Bruce saw him in something other than that jacket and it happened to be during the worst storm they’d seen all month.

Jason was still speaking, but now Bruce recognised the sharpness of his syllables to be curses. He hoped they were aimed at the little footstool Jason had tripped over rather than at himself.

Bruce clambered over to the window, knowing he needed to shut it before he tried anything else. Already, the room was _freezing_. He slipped and slid on the wet floor; he’d lost his slippers at some point during the whole candle debacle, and his socks stood no chance of survival against Gotham rain. The universe was currently acting as though it had never even heard of the moon, so the few minutes it took Bruce to wrestle to shut the ornate windows, the room was once again dark.

The silence was astounding when Bruce finally managed to close them. He picked his phone back up again, waving it in the direction of where Jason had been. Locating him only took a few seconds, but in that time, Bruce’s mind freely gave him all sorts of nightmare fodder about a Jason who had never been resurrected, who Bruce was only now seeing because of Tim and Cass’ séance downstairs.

But there was definitely a corporeal figure in Bruce’s room, who was now unsteadily standing back up. He teetered dangerously, the military grade boots on his feet the only reason he didn’t slip and fall instantly.

Bruce was now partly glad for the cover of darkness; it was much more awkward when he and Jason made eye contact.

When he got closer, it was clear that Jason was trying – in vain – to wring out his hoodie. And he was talking to himself.

“…fucking bastard.” Bruce caught the tail end of Jason’s mumbled tirade, and he let out a small sigh, knowing instantly that it was himself who Jason was referring to. “Thinks… drop a goddamn bombshell and expect— _what_ do you fucking expect, Bruce?”

What Bruce _hadn’t_ expected was Jason turning around and speaking to him so suddenly. He reared his head back a little; it really was lucky that it had turned out to be Jason and not some burglar, because by the way Bruce’s reactions were going, he clearly stood no chance.

“Nothing,” he said. “I don’t expect anything, Jason.”

Jason let out a huff of laughter, and that was when Bruce realised that his breath was entirely free of alcohol. He frowned; was it better to have Jason come here, intoxicated, or to have him acting out of sorts for reasons Bruce had suspicions of?

* * *

They were about ten minutes and three traffic lights away from their destination. Bruce cleared his throat.

“I hear you joined a book club?” he said.

Jason gave him a bewildered look. Bruce almost couldn’t see his eyes with how long his wet fringe was. “Uh,” he said. “You mean… the book club that consists of me and Alfred? _That_ book club?”

Bruce now frowned. “Maybe it was one of the other kids,” he said, brows furrowing.

Jason snorted. “Course you’re the type of parent to get their kids mixed up,” he mumbled. His voice was carefully neutral, not the bitterness it should’ve been.

Bruce had never wanted to be the sort of parent who got their kids mixed up. Maybe he needed to start keeping those files again, like he’d done when Dick and Jason had first started living with him. He hadn’t continued the practise with Dick once he turned twelve, thinking he had enough of a handle to not need to write down every new change. With Jason… he would never know just how long he would’ve continued it with Jason, but he imagined it would’ve been far longer.

By the time Tim arrived, the practise had been long buried. Cass’ looked more like a psych eval than anything.

Bruce drummed his fingers on the wheel. “ _Is_ there something you joined?” he asked carefully. “This case has been… taxing, to say the least. But it’s healthy to—”

The snort Jason delivered this time put his previous one to shame. “ _Healthy?_ ” he said. “That’s rich, coming from the man who Alfred had to lure out from the Cave like a cat with string.” When Bruce grimaced at the comparison, having been privy to luring Alfred the cat out of various places with string, Jason added, mulishly, “If you must know, then yeah, I joined a cooking class.”

Bruce blinked. This, he hadn’t expected. “Cooking?” he repeated. “Why?”

Jason glowered at him, bristling. “Why _not?”_ he said, burning a hole into the side of Bruce’s face with challenging eyes.

“I mean,” Bruce clarified, “why’re _you_ taking a cooking class? Your cooking’s fine.” Of all the people who needed to learn how to cook in the family, it certainly wasn’t Jason. Most of his kids could cook to survive, but Jason’s were the only culinary skills in the family that had made Alfred weep from happiness.

Jason sunk back into his seat with a shrug. “There’s only so much Alfred can teach me,” he said. “Sometimes I wanna surprise him with different food. And it’s not a beginner’s course.”

Bruce nodded. “I’m glad,” he said, after a pause. And then his mouth carried on. “Cooking is a good stress relieving activity, and it’s a useful skill to have.”

Jason’s shoulders had tensed once again. “You just want to taste the spoils of my labour like everyone else I’ve told,” he said, in a voice that sounded falsely casual.

Bruce shrugged as well as he could while driving. “I’ll never say no to your cooking.”

Jason didn’t say anything, and Bruce wondered whether this conversation had been a success or a colossal failure. The honking of a car behind them tried to drown out his thoughts.

* * *

Jason walked off mid-sentence, and Bruce didn’t even realise it until he heard the door close. Then, he was speed-walking, skidding through the puddle where Jason had lain when he’d fallen, and following the trail of water and muddy footprints.

Jason had stopped talking to himself, for whatever reason. Bruce wondered whether it’d been an ongoing through while Jason had trekked from the gates to the Manor, and then scaled up to Bruce’s window – and why _had_ he decided to enter through there, when it clearly wasn’t his destination? Bruce’s window was on the _third story_.

Bruce almost fell forward again when he tripped over a pair of boots – evidently, Jason had, at some point, realised he was wearing shoes inside and taken them off. Bruce picked them up gingerly and placed them to the side; he’d deal with them – and the state of the carpet – in the morning, when he could actually see it. For now, he would follow Jason to wherever his destination was.

He hoped this wasn’t a consequence of how they’d parted ways earlier that evening, but he knew that that was wishful thinking. He and Jason were destined to continue this game of being dragged back to the starting line after painstaking steps forward, it seemed.

Jason headed past the living room where Bruce had left Tim and Cass. He could still see the light coming from the closed doorway, and momentarily considered poking his head inside and dragging the two of them into this.

But as he neared, Bruce could hear eerie chanting coming from inside the room. He hurried past, not wanting to interrupt whatever his kids had decided to start. He wondered idly whether he’d need to move out for a few days while they cleared out whatever they were attempting to summon.

Jason had headed straight to the kitchen. He was filling the kettle. Bruce had no idea how he’d even _located_ the kettle in this darkness, but when he rounded the corner and saw Jason’s side profile, he realised that his eyes were glowing a faint green. It was just enough to be distinguishable in the darkness.

Bruce swallowed. “Jay?” he said. His voice seemed to echo in the stillness of the Manor’s kitchen.

“Tea?” Jason said. “I think I’ll bring some for Alfred when I go see him. He’s always making tea for me, I figure it’s time for me to do the same for him.”

“You came here to see Alfred?” _Through my window?_

Bruce saw the glint of Jason’s damp chin as he nodded. “Yup,” he said, popping the ‘P’. “He’s the only sane one in this shitshow.” His voice was bitter and raw, somehow the exact opposite to how he’d been only a few hours ago when Bruce had seen him.

“Did something happen?” Bruce regretted the words the moment he said them, because _he_ had happened. He’d never regretted something more. 

Jason snorted. “After all the times you’ve told me to come by the Manor, and the one time I do, I get interrogated?”

Bruce didn’t say anything for the longest moment, and they stood there in silence as the kettle whirred. Finally, just as the water was beginning to bubble, Bruce spoke.

“You know I meant what I said, about you being welcome here,” he said. “I just… my _window?”_

“Oh, for fuck’s—” Jason ran a hand through his hair, spraying water everywhere. Dimly, Bruce realised he should’ve probably offered him a towel. “Look, I _tried_ knocking, and then I tried picking the locks on all the downstairs doors _and_ windows, but they have some wack security thing on them. And this fucking rain? It started up _right_ when I was in the taxi over, like some stupid cliché.”

Bruce couldn’t help the huff of laughter that escaped him at the thought of the universe being out to create a soap opera.

“What,” Jason snapped.

Bruce shook his head, then realised that Jason couldn’t see him. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just glad you came in through my window and not the living room.”

Jason snorted. “That wasn’t luck – they’ve got the blinds open so you can see all the satanic shit they’re up to in there. Your window was the lesser of two evils.”

This time the silence was far less tense. Bruce slipped away for a moment, stepping into the watery hallway to where he was mostly sure a linen closet was located. After a moment of rooting around in its shelves, Bruce returned to the kitchen with three towels in his arms.

Jason was readying a tray, shuffling around the upside down teacups to make space for the teapot. He’d even, in the minute that Bruce had been gone, scrounged up sugar cookies from somewhere.

“Here,” Bruce murmured, holding out a towel. “You’ll get the biscuits wet.”

Jason looked at him for a moment before accepting the towel, running it over his hair a couple times before moving to the rest of his body. Bruce laid down a towel on the tiled floor where Jason had been standing, unable to be bothered to go for a mop now.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

Bruce waited a few minutes, just to be sure that Jason wasn’t going to answer. “What don’t you get, Jay?”

“ _You_ ,” Jason said, waving a hand at Bruce’s general vicinity. “I don’t fucking get what you said.”

* * *

Bruce regretted the ‘shortcut’ he’d decided to take, because the road he’d chosen for their detour contained a traffic jam just as intense as the one he’d wanted to bypass.

“Nice going,” Jason commented. “Not like we would’ve been halfway there if you’d just stuck through it.”

Bruce breathed out through his nose. He leaned over and turned on the radio, because surely background noise of some sort would be better than the expectant silence of needing to make conversation, of trying to make use of their one-on-one time.

Bruce changed channels until he finally got to a classical music station. He remembered it from Jason’s latest music phase, a complete one-eighty from the rock music he’d previously been enthralled by – something Bruce blamed _entirely_ on Jason’s visit to Titans Tower and Roy Harper.

Alfred had been the happiest; he’d organised for them to go and see a series of concerts together. They’d managed to go to the first one, but Jason had elected to skip the second – Bruce now realised why, though at the time it had been yet another point of concern. He’d been under the earth by the time the third one came around.

The moment the violin began playing, Bruce remembered quite vividly why he had never gone with Alfred in _his_ childhood to those concerts.

And then the channel changed and the violin solo was interrupted by the most horrendous thrashing of a drum set that Bruce had ever encountered. He winced involuntarily, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jason snort, but couldn’t hear it over the sound of a wailing noise.

“Is this…” Bruce searched his mind for the appropriate word. “Metal?”

Jason raised an eyebrow, almost in respect. “Screamo, to be more accurate.”

Bruce nodded, a little hesitantly. “And this is… what you’re listening to now?”

Jason didn’t respond, and the longer he went without even a nod in indication of an answer, the more Bruce’s heartrate rose, partly in fear that he’d come across as too judgemental, too overbearing, and partly because there was something about the screaming that well and truly pierced his eardrums.

And then Jason’s lips twitched, and he leaned forward and switched the channel. “Nah,” he said. “But I’m thinking of getting the brat into it.”

Bruce must not have concealed his horror well enough, because Jason huffed out a laugh.

Jason never laughed around him anymore, not like he used to. The closest he got was a cackle that was more reminiscent of the one and only time he’d been exposed to Joker venom. Bruce hadn’t thought it was possible to mourn Jason more deeply than when Jason had been dead, but now, he would find himself grieving for the small pieces he hadn’t allowed himself to remember to grieve. Things like a child’s laugh.

Bruce recognised the genre when Jason flipped the channel once more. _Bubblegum pop_. It was a fitting name. Jason let the song – Bruce suspected it was Taylor Swift – play out, and then changed it to yet another channel.

This time, there was something eerily familiar about the music. Bruce frowned a little, even as the traffic light turned green and they were finally, _finally_ , able to cross through the intersection.

A male voice began singing, soft and sombre. _You fold his hands and smooth his tie._ Bruce opened his mouth, then closed it again. His breathing was becoming more and more shallow. He knew this song, though he knew he’d only heard it in part once.

 _Now to close his eyes, never open them_.

The air rushed out of Bruce’s lungs as a memory bludgeoned into him, of a dark theatre and empty box, of having to keep up appearances and not allowing himself the luxury of grief because it was _his_ fault that he was watching a musical alone that night.

Bruce hadn’t been paying as much attention as he probably should’ve in order to follow the plot and know the characters’ names, but the moment that Melchior began singing to Moritz’s father – _the talks you never had, the Saturdays you never spent_ – was when he’d known that he had to leave. He would’ve been sick right then and there otherwise.

He’d stumbled outside, under no circumstance to pay any heed to the staff staring at his ashen face and clammy skin. He hadn’t been fast enough to escape another verse: _all things he ever lived are left behind/all the fears that ever flickered through his mind_. It brought to the forefront the way the life had drained out of Jason slowly; the colour had been long gone from his skin when Bruce had gotten to him, but he’d had to feel Jason’s body cooling in his arms, refusing to let go of him in the vain attempt that perhaps he’d simply missed the heartbeat. Jason would be scared if he were to wake up alone.

The next thing Bruce knew, he was tripping over a concrete curb, one hand bracing on the car as he tried desperately to remind himself that Jason was _right there_ , as he did his best to get air back into his lungs.

The boy – no, he wasn’t a boy any longer, now, was he? – in question had gotten out of the car and was shooting Bruce a look of absolute bewilderment, an expression that grew more and more self-conscious the longer that Bruce stared at him, unable to pull his eyes away. He was ruining it, he knew, he was ruining whatever little peace there was between Jason and himself, not to mention the rest of the family; the thought of that was another pebble sent skittering down the stony well that had opened up inside Bruce when he’d heard the first line of that song.

“Bruce…?” Jason said slowly, expression guarded. “You good?”

“I—” _Yes_ , was what Bruce wanted to say. He needed for everything to be fine, for Jason to look relieved at his answer and get back into the car without question so they could keep driving. “Jay.”

Bruce’s hands on Jason’s shoulders caught both of them by surprise. Jason stiffened beneath his touch; he hadn’t had muscles this large when Bruce had last held him. His shoulders had been broadening, with proper nourishment and training, but he’d still had the figure of a child.

“You’re freaking me out,” Jason said in a low voice. His gaze was wary as it tracked Bruce, too on edge to look away, but unable to make proper eye contact, either.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce got out. His heart had finally calmed down, leaving him in a shaky state of clammy calm. “Jay, I’m sorry.”

“Bruce, are you _on_ something—”

“I don’t know if I’ve told you, since you’ve been back, but Jason… Jason, I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Bruce hadn’t thought it was possible for Jason to become any more still, but he did. He seemed a hair away from jumping into motion, a tense statue. Jason stepped back, away from Bruce’s hold.

“What,” he said, voice low. In that one word there were a thousand unspoken ones, things that Bruce dimly wondered if he’d be able to interpret even if his mind wasn’t so completely fritzed out.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Bruce repeated, his lips numb.

Jason ran a hand through his hair furiously, eyes flashing strangely for a moment and face contorting. And then, without another word, he turned and walked the other way, pace brisk enough that he was lost in the crowd within an instant.

* * *

Bruce frowned. “That I’m glad you’re alive?” he said incredulously. It’d been a rather simple statement.

“You visit my grave every fucking year,” Jason countered harshly. “What am I supposed to think?”

Bruce stared at him, just a little. “You… you think I visit your grave because I wish you were still in it?” he asked incredulously. Jason didn’t respond, but the way his jaw clenched gave him away. “Jason, _no_.”

Jason snorted, a harsh sound in the silence of the room. “Alfred doesn’t go there anymore – he told me himself,” he said, voice now growing quieter. “So I can only think that _you_ go to think about how much better it’d be if I’d never come back, so you could hold onto that perfect image of your soldier.”

Bruce was, to put it mildly, aghast. “I go there,” he had to stop and clear his throat, because it’d become clogged up for reasons that had nothing to do with the chilly night, “I go there because… you still _died_. And I still had to mourn you. That doesn’t go away.”

“That’s what I fucking _mean_ ,” Jason hissed. “You’re so caught up in the kid who died that you don’t care about—” He broke off, hands leaning against the countertop. “You’d rather mourn him and live with your grief than accept the fact that I’m alive, and _that_ is why this is so fucking funny.”

Bruce had no idea what to say. He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know if I can do that,” he said honestly. “Not anytime soon.” Grief had been something so deeply entrenched within him, especially the grief surrounding Jason, that he had no idea who he’d be without it.

Jason picked up the tray, ready to head towards Alfred’s quarters.

“If your mother suddenly appeared to you tomorrow,” Bruce said, a little desperately now; he couldn’t leave their conversation where it was, not like this, not after all the progress they’d made, “would you be able to forget all the time you spent grieving her? The way she died? How it felt to live without her?”

Jason paused in his footsteps, but didn’t turn around. “This is gonna get cold soon,” he said, before continuing on his way.

It wasn’t much, but it was better than what Bruce had expected. It was better than silence, or a scathing remark. Bruce would take what he could get, and hopefully salvage some semblance of a relationship out of this.

Bruce turned towards the kitchen, and there on the counter was a teacup, sitting on a saucer with two biscuits on its side.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious about the song, it's called Left Behind and it's also from Spring Awakening. [Here's an audio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBX6Rvd831c&ab_channel=AlexWorthington) and here's the scene [performed by Jonathon Groff and Lea Michelle (bc I love JG's voice)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nrA7hLuof8&ab_channel=Genica) ^~^ 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!! Happy holidays ^~^


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